Hemi, a brown spotted boy, Shelby, a snow marble girl and Rally, a brown marble boy, belong to Amy and Tyler Cross. How lucky they are to have three such beautiful and yet such different Bengals.  

I started with sketches of them together and once we had one we liked I moved on to the canvas. The painting will be 22×16 inches when it’s finished.

The three of them are sketched loosely onto the canvas.

The under painting is developing, the cats have a bit more form and the background is starting to go on.

Now the background is laid in and I’m starting to develop the cats themselves, especially their eyes.

I’m really enjoying painting these three beauties, I love the pose, I love the contrast between their different coats and especially the three sets of beautiful Bengal eyes, gold, green and blue. This photo shows their eyes well.

 And here is the finished painting. It’s many layers later and I’ve been gradually building up the colour in each of the cats, developing their fur and adding the shine on their coats.

Then there’s a period of fine tuning, emphasizing the shadows and tweaking the colour across the painting. Then I finished the red cushions, although they don’t come out well in digital photos. Then the final touch, whiskers!

Shelby

Rally

Hemi

And here’s a close up detail of the canvas….

   
Hemi’s beautiful green eyes.